Page 82 of Dirty Roxie
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s exactly like that.” I cap the paint and stand back to look at it, trying to remain objective.
“I love it,” Quinn says.
“Me too.”
“Woman! Feed me, I worked up an appetite.” Mack’s voice echoes through the empty halls.
His heavy steps lumber up the stairs, but I’m not prepared for what greets me when he comes into view.
MACK
I hear the girls talking upstairs, and it sounds serious, so I announce my arrival before I head up. I’d forgotten about how I might look until I see the expression on Daria’s face.
“Ohmigod, what happened to you?” she laughs.
“We were sanding drywall,” I defend.
She runs her finger along my forehead and pulls it away, caked with white dust, still laughing.
“You look like the abominable snowman,” Quinn giggles from her perch in the windowsill.
“What’s the room look like?” Daria asks.
“Well, we vacuumed the floor,” I tell her.
“You should have vacuumed yourselves.” She pats my stomach, a cloud of white dust plumes in the air. I grab her around the waist and pull her into me, covering her with the same dust, then nuzzling her neck to make sure I get all the sweat and grime on her too.
“Oh gross, Mack, yuck. You’re filthy.”
“You said you like it when I’m dirty.” I wiggle my eyebrows until she giggles, then swing her up over my shoulder in a fireman’s hold.
“Hey, where’s the other guy?” Quinn asks.
“He said something about wanting a shower before he saw you. Pussy.”
“I appreciate that pussy,” she says. “Wait, that came out wrong.”
I’m already laughing.
“Come on, Cutie, we’ll walk you home.”
She hops down from the sill and follows us down the stairs and out to the front yard. I set Daria down so I can lock up, her front now covered in the same dust as me.
“I definitely like it when you’re dirty,” I tell her with a wink. She waves a hand at me dismissively, but I don’t miss the look of appreciation on her face. Daria may like to think she’s cold and unfeeling, but she loves it when I flirt with her. Relies on it, even. And I aim to please where my woman is concerned.
We make it the few hundred yards to the house that Quinn and Reed currently share. He must hear us walking up, because he meets us on the front porch, wearing only low hung jeans. Clean ones and his hair is wet. He comes down and kisses Quinn, then studies her face, pushing her hair back from her eyes.
“How are you feeling, beautiful?”
“Good.” She holds up the ginger stick she’s been chewing on. He grimaces. I know it bothers him how sick she’s been during her pregnancy, and it’s only the second month. We talked about it today. I tried to convince him it’ll pass, but he hates seeing her in discomfort. Regardless, being pregnant agrees with Quinn, even if it doesn’t agree with her digestive system. She’s never looked prettier.
“Hey, give us like twenty minutes to rinse off, and the goulash should be ready by then,” Daria calls out to them. She’s been experimenting with Russian recipes lately, and we’ve all been theluckyrecipients. I should say she’s experimenting with cooking because she’s still not that great at it. But she takes offense when I voice opinions like that one. For my own safety, I now keep them to myself.
“How’s the room coming along?” she asks of the addition we’re adding to Quinn and Reed’s little house for when the baby comes.
“Good. The roofers come later this week, and we’ve almost got the whole interior sanded and ready for texture.” It’s safe to say that we all took a left turn with our lives when we returned from Colombia. Daria got this idea to create a safe haven for victimized women and pulled the rest of us right into it with her.
She still has the bar, which runs mostly on its own thanks to a great manager that she pays really well. And she all but turned the Dirty Darlings over to Jen and Alyssa. Who are off doing their own thing for a bit. Alyssa is traveling, and Jen went home for a few months to help her parents.
